Fatal extraction and speed-dating
Shining a light on an untold crisis
A superb piece of storytelling — from field reporting by Will Fitzgibbon and Eleanor Bell — to development and execution by Chris Zubak-Skees on Kimberley Porteous’ digital team — is having great impact on our sites and across our partners and the industry.
“Fatal Extraction” the catchily named and compelling story of the troubling legacy of Australian, not Chinese, mining investment in several African countries, looks like it will be our most-read story from the Center and ICIJ team this year. It also marks an important step in our innovation on storytelling methods and bringing together the capabilities of the ICIJ network and Public Integrity. There are some important lessons in it for ways to tell longer stories: long-form journalism by other means. More pieces in the series here.
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A lot comes together in this piece.
Will was a Graeme Wood fellow, supported by our former board member and Australian activist investor.
Related: Fatal Extraction: the impact of Australian mining in Africa
Eleanor is an award-winning video journalist and this is a good example of our video strategy of focusing on set pieces which bring stories to life and allow the voices of the characters to tell their own stories in a way we know people like to consume.
Kimberley, our chief digital officer, has personally steered the entire project through production, categorizing it as our first “6” in the Richter-like scale she has coined for projects of high complexity. Hamish Boland-Rudder delivered the ICIJ package online, intern Suzy Gashi did heavy-lifting on graphics and video. Cecile Schillis-Gallego, shortly to move to Paris for the ICIJ, did the data work and editor Martha Hamilton was also the story editor. It couldn’t have happened without fact checking leader Peter Smith and our lawyer Mike Rothberg.
The ICIJ, led by Gerard Ryle, has 13 partners in Africa publishing the story which stands to be a great way to break in to that market and expand our engagement with journalists and audiences there.
Speed-dating donors and Uber-loving candidates
Money and politics has always been and will remain at the heart of the Center. Much of the political team stayed into the small hours overnight on July 15 to deliver a package on the presidential candidates’ first disclosures. It had a catchy intro for sure with "It’s speed dating season for presidential campaign contributors” but the essence of course is in the data and analysis delivered by all those on the byline on that story, Carrie Levine, Michael Beckel, Ben Wieder, Dave Levinthal and Alexander Cohen.
Here is a sample of the data which pretty obviously sets out the stall behind Hillary Clinton and the rest.
Related: Explore the data: where Australian mining leaves its mark
This is the meat and drink of the Center: timely, fast and beautifully illustrated in a competitive field.
There’s more to this story. Click here to read the rest at the Center for Public Integrity.
This story is part of Inside Publici. Stories we’re working on, the impact of our investigations, news about our fundraising efforts, and other issues that shape our work. Click here to read more stories in this topic.
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Copyright 2015 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
